A Touch of the Sun (1956) User Reviews

Howerd's Way!

[The-Other-Monkey · 5/10 · 8 January 2006]

A surprisingly low key (for him!) performance from Frankie Howerd as a hotel concierge. He longs for the quiet life on the French Riviera and when he inherits some money off he goes.

However, despite his best efforts, he can't get any rest and decides to go back to the hotel. He then has to save the hotel from closing by persuading three "ey up, reet grand" northern businessmen to invest in the hotel. Of course he succeeds and gets the girl.

A cheerful British comedy helped along with able support from, Denis Price, Gordon Harker, Richard Wattis, Alfie Bas and Colin Gordon. Just enough laughs to cheer you up on a wet weekend!

A touch of Howerd

[zeppo-2 · 5/10 · 5 October 2010]

Frankie Howerd takes the leading role in this standard British farce that was so common in the late fifties and doesn't do a bad job either. Usually more familiar in a supporting role,he takes centre stage here and all the action revolves around him.

The basic plot is the grass isn't always greener on the other side as Frankie finds out when his desired dream to retire to the French Rivera is a complete disaster. Returning to the UK he buys his old employment hotel and has to convince three businessmen it's worth investing in. Cue lots of rushing about farce proceedings as Frankie makes the hotel look busy with his small staff putting on numerous disguises.

Still quite amusing and watchable for it's short running time but it's the little things that kept me interested. Most of all Frankie's strange 'Eraserhead' hairstyle, Alfie Bass,the atypical Jewish performer,playing a Yorkshireman! And Ruby Murray's appalling attempt at acting, thank goodness she has a nice singing voice that's all I can say....

Hotel-based humour with a youthful Frankie Howerd

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 14 December 2016]

A TOUCH OF THE SUN is a low budget British comedy film with the antics centred around an upper class hotel at which Frankie Howerd works as a porter. This one of the British comedy great's earliest leading roles and he certainly entertains the viewer in his own inimitable style, always ready with a gag or a joke based around fish-out-of-water situations or misunderstandings. Howerd's lowly character is put upon by those around him until he comes into a fortune and decides to do something about it.

I found the comedy in this film to be somewhat limited and dated although the trappings of the era remain interesting. Howerd's early interactions with the idiosyncratic guests at the hotel are good fun and Dennis Price is excellent in his straight man role. However, the film's best part is an extended holiday segment in which Howerd discovers that life in the sun, sea, and sand of the French Riviera isn't all it's cracked up to be. This part is very true to life and very funny with it. The latter half of the production emphasises plotting over comedy but is still watchable. Irish singer Ruby Murray plays in support and gets to supply a couple of songs.

A very funny early Frankie Howerd film

[robert-temple-1 · 7/10 · 25 June 2016]

Frankie Howerd began appearing in feature films in 1954 (THE RUNAWAY BUS), but by 1956 he had this comedy star vehicle, in which he truly shines. Back then, he was far more restrained than he became later. There were not so many oohs nor so much suggestive sexual innuendo as appeared in his later persona. Nor did he 'take over', but instead he played a role in a definable story. This film is extremely amusing, and works very well. It is good to see the excellent Gordon Harker lending his support, though I wished his role had been larger. A young Irish popular singer from Belfast named Ruby Murray, aged 21, is given a role in the film. It is the only film in which she ever appeared. She gets to sing, of course. Her acting is sweetly amateurish, which in my opinion only adds to her elfin charm. Pardon my ignorance of Irish singers of the 1950s, but I plead that one cannot know everything, and hence I have to confess I had never previously heard of her. But it seems that she was 'one of the most successful Irish singers of all time'. Well done, then, she and John MacCormack (a friend of my wife's grandparents). Ireland is 'busting out all over' with talent and always has been, and whether green or orange, they are all very charming, apart from the ones who blow everybody up, that is. (As someone who is both part Irish and part Ulster, I consider myself a potential cross-border phenomenon and wish they would just all learn how to get along and stop causing trouble.) Alfred Shaughnessy, later famous for writing the hit TV series UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS (1971-1975), wrote the story and script for this film, and that helps explain why it is so good. There is plenty of wit, but the story is a satirical one. Frank Howerd plays a hall porter in a swank London hotel (swank for 1956, that is, though we would not call it that now) who inherits a lot of money from an elderly customer of the hotel who had taken a fancy to him. He quits his job and fulfils his dream of going off to the French Riviera to live the life of Riley (there's those Irish again), but finds it dull and empty so that he longs to go back to his old life. He uses what is left of his inherited fortune to buy the hotel where he once worked, but has none left for operations costs. For that, he is dependent upon a favourable investment decision by a group of three hard-nosed Yorkshire businessmen. The film has wonderful opportunities to make fun of the Yorkshiremen, with their clipped accents, bluntness, and naïve susceptibility to being impressed by titles. Frank gets his old chums who had been on the staff of the hotel before it closed to come and work for free while the Yorkshiremen visit, but to dress up in outrageous disguises (he himself masquerades successfully as a duchess!) to try to fool the potential investors into believing that the failed hotel is a centre of high society, patronised by the rich and titled. There are many opportunities for high comedy as the staff rush from room to room changing costumes and wigs, to maintain the fiction. This is all good fun, and will cheer up anybody suffering from a dreary, wet British afternoon.

A Touch of the Sun

[CinemaSerf · 6/10 · 24 November 2023]

I was never a great fan of Frankie Howerd's brand of comedy, but he's actually not bad in this rather quirkily entertaining tale of rags to riches. He is "Darling" who takes great pleasure in quitting as an hotel porter when he is left a small fortune. He soon bores of the high life and returns to his former workplace only to find it's struggling. He sees a chance to rescue it, settle a few old scores - and maybe even turn a profit if he can rope in a few gullible investors. To that latter end, he galvanises the staff and some of their friends to create the impression that this is a bustling, thriving, business that is a must-have for anyone looking to get into the hotel business. Howerd tones down his usual style of smutty humour here and tempered by the practically minded "Ruby" (Ruby Murray) and the odd dignifying appearance from manager "Hatchard" (Dennis Price) delivers a quickly moving story of the grass not always being greener. If nothing else, it does serve as a reminder of just what we were watching back then - simple comedy themes rather over-delivered, and though it's a bit on the long side I found it an OK watch.

Has not dated well.

[plan99 · 5/10 · 27 February 2023]

Frankie Howerd can only play one character, the one we see all the time. He was OK in this but his performance would not have had casting directors rushing to sign him up for other films. The plot was OK, the inherited £10,000 being about £312,000 in 2023, that's inflation for you. Farces were all the rage at one time, in films and on stage, but they are just about dead now. All of Frankie's stand up routines were written by Eric Sykes but he is not alone in being a successful stand-up comedian only due to the writing skills of others. It's worth watching for curiosity and historical value only.

A Vehicle For Howerd

[boblipton · 5/10 · 9 November 2019]

Frank Howerd is the hall porter -- we'd say desk manager or concierge -- of the Royal Connaught Hotel in London, where he eccentrically and charmingly manages matters for the guests. One of the guests expresses her appreciation by leaving him ten thousand pounds in her will. He quits and moves to the south of France, where he's perfectly miserable. He returns to London, but the hotel has closed without his help. So he buys it and tries to get some Manchester investors to put money in the place. However...

It's a style of comedy that does not appeal to me. Howerd's performance seems more calculated than wild, and the big set-piece that makes up the final third seems rote. There's some talent on display; Dennis Price plays the hotel manager in a role that looks like a day's shooting, and Gordon Harker is present without much to do as the elevator operator. Clearly intended as a vehicle for Howerd, the movie will have its charms for his fans; however its structure seems more like a poorly outlined farce than anything else.

Very few laughs!

[geoffm60295 · 3/10 · 26 November 2019]

I found it a grim experience to sit through this joyless & humourless second feature B film. It looks and feels like that this film was made on the cheap. Even the holiday scenes in the South of France, which could have offered glamour and romance, were dull and uninspiring. After only half an hour, I realised that I would have to grit me teeth as I found the dialogue puerile and Frankie Howerd's voice and facial expressions particularly tedious. The storyline is weak and totally unconvincing. Characters came in and out of the story without rhyme or reason. Dennis Price, a wonderful character actor, is wasted in this film, as he has too little time on the screen. The film was meant to be a showcase for Frankie Howerd, cast as a hall porter, but it sadly revealed that although he was a great stand up comedian, acting was his 'Achilles Heel.' The fact that Howerd dominates most of the scenes is unfortunate as I became quickly irritated at his one note and lack lustre performance. After watching this film, it was clear that Frankie Howerd was out of his depth as a comedy film star.

Delightful British Farce!

[xmasparty_2003 · 8/10 · 16 September 2005]

Despite somewhat low vote averages, this classic Frankie Howerd film is one of the better 1950s British farces. Howerd, playing a hotel concierge, inherits a sum of money, and decides to use it for a holiday in the south of France. All manner of hilarious debacles follow, leading Howerd to the conclusion that he was better off in the first place.

Among some of the better character parts are performed by Ruby Murray, one of Ireland's greatest pop singers of the 1950s, Dennis Price (The Pure Hell of St Trinians), Alfie Bass (Are You Being Served?), and John Vere (Hancock's Half Hour). Alfred Shaughnessy's script is sharp and witty, and most of the humor holds to the present.

"By the holy saints, what's goin' on in this hotel?"

[richardchatten · 4/10 · 23 November 2019]

An ambitious but fascinatingly shambolic attempt at a big screen vehicle for Frankie Howerd (that morphs into a rehash of 'The Happiest Days of Your Lives') that simply ensured that he henceforth concentrated on cabaret and TV.

The sleazy North Country financial backers played by Alfie Bass (who is hardly inside the door before he promptly propositions receptionist Dorothy Bromley with the smooth chat up line "Give us a kiss love!!") and Reginald Beckwith (who gets so drunk he propositions a dragged-up Howerd) demonstrated over sixty years before the Harvey Weinstein scandal that this sort of thing had been going on since the days of Herod.